Peace on Earth…
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“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests”
Trip back to the 1960’s: I am living without peace; so is much of the country. The inner turmoil convulsing in me mirrors the outer world; it is tearing at the inner seams. Everything is topsy-turvy, upside-down, and wrong-side up. Enduring principles, paragons, and precepts are disputed. Is there no fixed point? Moreover, America and the USSR are locked in a ‘Cold War’ from Berlin to Viet Nam; blacks struggle for equality; cities burn; and revolutionaries clash with the status-quo; even in my own family conflict surges: my parents, when not shouting at each other, are yelling at me. The year is 1968 - it seems like 2020. I have no peace.
The waring polarities - protester-establishment; male-female; black-white; young-old - converge with my inner turmoil. People in the streets cry, ‘Peace, Peace’, but there is no peace.
In 1969 at nineteen, a watershed moment occurs: my eyes are opened. I see my problem - each person’s problem - I am estranged from God. “We were enemies” says the apostle Paul. I am God’s rival every bit as much as Winston Churchill was Lady Astor’s. She said to him, “If I were your wife, I’d put poison in your tea.” He replied, “Madam, if I were your husband, I’d drink it.”
I deny it. Me, an enemy of God? Ridiculous. What? Am I not living as though I am the King of me? A kingdom cannot have two kings. Philosopher Bertrand Russell quipped, “Every man would like to be God if it were possible; some few find it difficult to admit the impossibility.”
Has not God declared, ‘I am God and there is no other”? I am living de facto as God. This is a recipe for war. I own up to it: I am trying to be king in God’s country. I am in a state of enmity with God.
Then I learn God did something to break the impasse: he sued for peace. “While we were still sinners Christ died for us,” says the apostle Paul. God comes at Christmas to give us Easter. He comes in the flesh to bring peace; He comes to offer friendly relations with himself by dying an atoning death on a cross: “Peace on earth, mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled!” Abraham Lincoln said, “Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?” God exchanges a “falling out” for friendship. “God was pleased to reconcile to Himself all things” - even me - declares the apostle Paul. Jesus made friends with this enemy; his truce with me is everything. Accepting this Prince of Peace has imparted peace that runs deeper than tempests. Since then, my heart gladly exclaims, “Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace!”
Etched in my mind this Christmas is the 1972 iconic photograph of the naked nine year old girl, Kim Phuc Phan Thi, fleeing down a Viet Nam roadway shrieking in pain and fear with an ominous, dark, billowing napalm cloud behind her. Scarred physically and emotionally from burns over her body, Phan prays to the god of Cao Dai for healing and peace. There is no answer. Either he is not interested, or not there. Later, she is inside Saigon’s central library thumbing through religious books on Baha’i, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Cao Dai…then she picks up the New Testament. She reads through the Gospels. She is struck by Jesus. He claims to be “the way, and the truth and the life.” He is tortured for his claim. The more she reads the more she is convinced he would not suffer such things if he were not God. As she continues to read the New Testament, she finds Jesus’ claim authentic.
On Christmas Eve 1982, she attends worship at a small church in Saigon - just minutes away from where she was bombed. The pastor speaks of Christmas gifts but especially of the gift of Jesus Christ. “How desperately I needed peace,” Phan says. “I had so much hatred in my heart…I wanted to let go of all the pain…I wanted this Jesus”. On the night before the birth of our Lord, she stands up, steps into the aisle, and strides to the front of the sanctuary. She says ‘Yes’ to him, inviting “Jesus into my heart”.
When she awakes on Christmas morn, Phan says, “I was finally at peace”. A half century after running down the Saigon road screaming in pain and fear, she celebrates the freedom and peace Jesus Christ gives. Having been through unspeakable horrors, she realizes there is nothing greater than the love of our blessed Savior. Fifty years later, this writer, though his circumstances are different from Phan’s, rejoices in the same peace of the Prince of Peace, proclaiming,
“Glory be to God on high, and peace on earth, descend; God comes down, he bows the sky, and shows himself our friend.”
Tom is currently a retired Elder in the Virginia Annual Conference. He has pastored churches in Virginia, California and England. Studying John Wesley’s theology, he received his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from the University of Bristol, Bristol, England and his Master of Divinity degree from Asbury Theological Seminary. While a student, he and his wife Pam lived in John Wesley’s Chapel “The New Room”, Bristol, England, the first established Methodist preaching house. Tom was a faculty member of Asbury Theological Seminary. He has contributed articles to Methodist History and the Wesleyan Theological Journal. He and his wife have two children, daughter Karissa, who is an attorney in Richmond, Virginia, and, John, who is a recent graduate of Regent University. Being a part of the development of their grandson Beau is a rich reward. Tom enjoys a good book by a crackling fire with an English cup of tea. His life text is, ‘Jesus, confirm my heart’s desire, to work and speak and think for thee’
